Columbus offering learning centers, grants to help stem tide of violence

In an effort to stem the rising tide of violence within the city, Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and other city leaders announced new initiatives and grant opportunities to help reach young people at risk of being felled by bullets.

The city will be opening extension learning centers in community centers to offer students a chance for consistent in-person education opportunities, Ginther said at a news conference Thursday.

More:Watch city's press conference

"Our goal is to connect with every child and to give them that in-person learning," Ginther said. "We know in-person instruction is best for young people as they grow and develop."

The centers will remain open at least through January, when Columbus City Schools officials have said they hope to begin transitioning to in-person classes.

Ginther also highlighted an effort by Applications for Purpose Pride and Success (APPS) called the " We Care" tour. Participants in the APPS program have been going door-to-door to provide families with care packages, including hand sanitizer and sports and arts supplies. The mayor said the tour has reached 600 families so far.

"We, as a community, have to decide: Are our kids worth fighting for," he said.

Thursday's press conference, which was Ginther's fifth since June related to increasing gun violence in the city, came several hours after an elderly East Side woman was shot at her home and about two hours before Columbus police responded to a woman fatally shot in a car at Griggs Reservoir Park on the Northwest Side.  

Related:Under fire: Behind the increase in violence in Columbus

There have been hundreds of people who have survived gunshot injuries this year. That number also includes more than 50 children — including two who were shot while in a vehicle in Italian Village on Monday afternoon and a 13-year-old who accidentally shot himself in the leg on the West Side around 7:40 p.m. Wednesday.

Columbus police Commander Scott Weir said the ShotSpotter technology, which was recently approved for extension and expansion into the Near East Side, has helped police get an accurate portrait of how many shots are being fired. 

Currently in place in the Hilltop, Linden and the South Side, ShotSpotter has recorded more reports of gunshots being fired in each of those areas so far this year than in all of 2019.

Weir said there have been 1,100 ShotSpotter incidents this year on the Hilltop, compared to 1,151 in all of 2019. In Linden, there have been 1,060 reports of gunships compared to 766 incidents all of last year.

And on the South Side, the increase is even more drastic, he said, with 1,284 reported in all of 2019 and more than 1,800 incidents so far this year.

"Solving this crisis is not easy," Ginther said. "If there was a simple solution, we would have done it already."

Ginther also highlighted a national program directed by David Kennedy, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York that will begin a six-month analysis to pinpoint who is causing the violence in Columbus and work to stop it by reducing street-level beefs among groups of people. 

The National Network for Safe Communities has implemented its Group Violence Intervention initiative in cities across the country, with many of them seeing reductions in violence. City Council approved an $80,000 contract on Oct. 12 for the program.

More:New violence prevention initiative in Columbus to focus on the perpetrators

Carla Williams-Scott, the city's neighborhoods director, said Columbus will make about $625,000 in federal CARES ACT money available through four community organizations in different areas of the city — Community Development for All People, New Salem Baptist Church's outreach ministries, Africentric Personal Development Shop and The Shalom Zone. They will provide the money to grassroots groups that are working to stop the violence in their own ways. 

"Many organizations are already out there doing this work and are organizations that our youth trust," Williams-Scott said. "Many have shoestring budgets, limited staff and limited capacity. All of them have had setbacks due to COVID-19. We want to help them with funding to help keep going with the necessary protocols."

While all of the programming is one aspect of a multi-pronged approach to address the violence, City Council President Shannon Hardin said it also takes community members stepping up as mentors, reporting information they know to police to help solve crimes and working together. 

"This might be the hardest year any of us live through," Hardin said. "Disagreements that may have ended previously with folks walking away are escalating into gun fights. We can't just look to City Hall and rely on leaders like myself with titles. We have to stack hands, regardless of what your title is." 

Hardin also said that comments by himself and Ginther about racism issues within the Columbus Division of Police should not be a message that crimes shouldn't be reported or information provided to police. 

"When there’s a lack of trust, (people) take things into their own hands and when they take things into their own hands, people get shot," Hardin said. "Not acknowledging (the racism) and working to correct that would only cause more lack of trust ... I don’t see it as an either/or. People are putting out false choices that you can’t support the police and ask for reform and ask for good community relationships."

bbruner@dispatch.com

@bethany_bruner